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We are pleased to announce Translations I, the first in a series of occasional events featuring translators and their translations, at The Broadway Bookshop on Thursday 30 July 2026. The evening will feature readings by Sophie R. Lewis, Pauline Le Goff, Yě Yě, Janani Ambikapathy, Rashed Aqrabawi, and Rayane Sabbagh.

Doors 6.45pm; readings from 7.15pm.

Entry is free but spaces are limited. Please RSVP: books@broadwaybookshophackney.com

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Sophie R. Lewis is an editor and a translator from the French and Portuguese. Her translation of Noémi Lefebvre’s Blue Self-Portrait (Les Fugitives) was shortlisted for both the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, and her translation of Nastassja Martin’s In the Eye of the Wild (New York Review Books) was a winner of the non-fiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation in 2022. She is the translator of Nastassja Martin’s latest book, East of Dreams (New York Review Books), from which she will be reading at the event.

Yě Yě is a poet and translator. She is the founder of Poetry Lab Shanghai and Nü Editions, and the author of three poetry collections: The Other Side (Letter Records), South (Clearing Books), and The Yellowing Roots of Not (Nü Editions). Her poems and translations have appeared in AGNI, Tripwire Journal, SNOW lit rev, Oxford Poetry, Modern Poetry in Translation, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, and PEN America, among many others. She has been awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant 2026 for her translations of Jike Ayou’s work.

Janani Ambikapathy was born and raised in Chennai. She was awarded her PhD in English from the University of Cambridge. Her recent poetry pamphlet If Not Theirs was published by Veer2. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared at the Poetry Foundation, Lana Turner, Circumference Magazine, Firmament, Modernism/modernity and elsewhere.

Rashed Aqrabawi is a London-based poet born in Amman. He won the 2024 BOMB poetry prize and his debut pamphlet is Christ, Mountain Road (Blown Rose).

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Translations: An Evening is an occasional series of events featuring translators and their translations. Working in pairs with “companion” readers, translators will read their translations while companions will read the original texts — or vice versa. Moving back and forth from one language to another, the readings’ aim is to mimic the estrangement of translation — the gap that opens up between sound and sense — and to capture the moment before coherence, or the moment of incoherence.

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Order your copies of In the Eye of the Wild and East of Dreams by Nastassja Martin (trans. Sophie R. Lewis) >>